In a forthcoming memoir, David Gottfried offers a 20-year history of the green building movement and his own costly effort to create the perfect green home. / Wendy Koch

by Wendy Koch, USA TODAY

by Wendy Koch, USA TODAY

David Gottfried wanted to "walk the talk" so about 15 years after co-founding the private U.S. Green Building Council, he set out to build his own perfect green home.

In 2007, he and wife Sara bought a charming but tired 1915 Craftsman bungalow in Oakland with inlaid wood floors, built-in wall cabinets and 1,500 square feet just around the corner from their favorite coffee shop. With a "small is green" mantra, he launched a stressful, year-plus renovation.

"I've had it! " he recalls Sara saying one weekend, mid-project, as he drove her and their two young daughters to the third building supply store of the day. She asked: "Can't we just go to a movie or park like a normal family?"

Gottfried, who studied solar engineering at Stanford University in the early 1980s, describes in a forthcoming memoir how he was a "man possessed" as he tried to pour everything he knew about green building into his idyll. "So of course I went overboard."

He insulated walls, sealed crevices, used rainwater to flush the toilet, installed double-pane windows, replaced lights with LEDs and compact fluorescents, switched to wall-mounted hydronic radiator heating, put solar panels atop the roof and built a new kitchen with recycled materials and Energy Star appliances.

The result? A $500-per-square-foot greenovation that attracted a six-page Metropolitan Home spread, a Planet Green video series and -- at the time -- the highest number of points for any home under the council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system.

Three years later, in 2011, he sold it. Desperate for more space, the former Armani-wearing real estate developer bought a four-story, nearly 5,000-square-foot house in the Berkeley Hills with a view of the San Francisco Bay.

"I'd forgotten my Brentwood roots and the ingrained preference for flying first class and staying at luxurious hotel suites," he writes, admitting regret for not adding a master bedroom wing to the bungalow. "As the frog said, it's not always easy being green. Sometimes we just want more, even if it isn't warranted."

USA TODAY sat down with Gottfried, now CEO of the California venture capital firm Regenerative Ventures, at the 2013 GreenBuild conference to discuss his new book Explosion Green as well as his personal journey and emerging trends.

Q: You wrote a 2004 book, Greed to Green, about the U.S. Green Building Council (a non-profit that promotes eco-friendly construction) so why another?

A: Explosion Green is our full 20-year story...It first started with USGBC 20 years ago and in 1998, I helped form the Japan Green Building Council. I welcomed them on a stage in Tokyo. We now have 100 green building councils around the world. We've likely done more for carbon mitigation than any movement in the world.

Q: You describe how much you loved the 1915 bungalow you renovated. What prompted you to sell it?

A: We only had one full bathroom and another half bathroom in the house and a second shower outside for me....It was just too small. I took out all the interior walls to get more space and let in the daylight, because Craftsmen are dark. But then acoustically, it was noisy. I like to sleep in on the weekends, but in that home you could hear every word....It killed me - it was like a child I sold. But I went a little too far on the livability (front) for our family. Not that a family can't live in that size.

Q: What's your current home like?

A: The real-estate developer side of me took over from the green side of me. I bought a gorgeous Mediterranean in the Berkeley Hills, and we have more nature there....It could go through a green renovation even though it's only 10 years old......I bought the lot next door so what I'd really want to do is put my attention there and do something with prefab.... I want to see if I can build a home that's cheaper, better, faster, greener and film the whole thing and do it with prefab, because custom construction is too slow and too expensive. I need to crack that code.

Q: How helpful is the recent boom in products to create not just green roofs but also living walls that grow food?

A: They're wonderful, because they can also insulate a building and capture water. And I like to grow food. I've always thought that each building should grow its own food and have a farmer's market every Friday in the lobby. And that's cool. The vertical (walls) get tons of sunlight and can be used not just for vegetative walls but for solar also.

Q: How much can home automation devices boost building efficiency?

A: You can save 30% to 50% of energy and water....We can measure and control everything -- every outlet, every light switch, every light, every mechanical system. Every fixture can have its own IP (Internet Protocol), sending that to some control system that turns the lights off, turns the heat off, increases the fresh air, knows when we're at peak power...Cisco says 7,000 sensors can be in a building, and you're going to see it.

Q: What difference can efficiency make in addressing climate change?

A: Buildings consume about 40% of energy here on Earth...That's just enormous. As (scholar) Amory Lovins told us, a megawatt of conservation is equal to a watt of generation. So buildings and homes, especially the inefficient ones -- which are almost all of them, are our power plants of the future. We could get out of coal, even nuclear, if we all saved 30% of our energy...This is really the best way to get at climate change mitigation."